Various processes for producing a one-piece garment blank on a flat knitting machine have already become known or been proposed. Thus, for example, German Offenlegungsschrift 1,811,029 makes known a process in which the knitting of the flat-knitted one-piece garment blank begins at that end which is to limit the neck opening in the finished garment. Then, by the use of the so-called gusseting technique, the number of wales is increased during the knitting of the shoulder region of the garment, in order to bring the sleeve portions into a desired angular position relative to the body parts of the blank. German Offenlegungsschrift 2,614,283 has proposed a process in which the one-piece garment blank is started at the ends of the sleeve portions and at the end of a front part or back part remote from the neck and is subsequently knitted in the shoulder region with continuous courses by means of a progressive intershaping of the outer regions of the portions in accordance with a desired run of the transitions between the sleeves and the shoulder region. German Patent Specification 2,803,338 makes known a process in which the sleeve portions of a garment blank produced in one piece are brought into a desired final position relative to the body parts of the garment blank by the formation of bulges in the shoulder region, obtained by an increase in the number of stitches of the generally continuous wales.
Various disadvantages have to be allowed for in all the processes known previously. Either flat knitting machines with a long needle-bed length are needed to produce the garment blank, or the sleeves have not only to be closed, but be also at least partially connected to the body parts of the fabric blank by seams. There are therefore severe restrictions on the shaping of the finished garment and strict limitations to the possibility of patterning of the regions of the garment.